The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith Read Free Book Online

point.
    â€œHey. Kid. Kid.”
    Cobie made an attempt at getting Robin Sexton’s attention. He waved his palm in front of the kid, but Robin had his face down over his Styrofoam plate so that his nose was just an inch above what remained of his hamburger bun.
    Cobie Petersen tapped Robin Sexton’s head and pointed at his ears.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œTake that shit out of your ears.”
    Robin tweezered his fingers into his ears and popped out the two compacted beads of toilet paper. They were impressively large. Also, one of them had a smear of pumpkin-colored earwax on it.
    â€œWhat?” Robin said.
    Cobie Petersen asked him this: “Were you really jerking off in bed last night?”
    All the eyes of Jupiter were riveted on Robin Sexton, who, despite the dimness of evening, turned visibly red and bit his lip. This concerned me. I slept about sixteen inches away from Robin Sexton, and so did Max.
    â€œNo,” Robin said. But if the boys of Jupiter could act as a fair jury, Robin Sexton would have been convicted on the spot.
    Robin added, “I. Uh. I sleepwalk. I had to make myself stay awake.”
    Cobie Petersen shook his head. “Jerking off is not a good way to keep yourself awake, kid. It just makes you tired.”
    Max nodded. “Punching the clown puts me to sleep, too, but I would never do it in Jupiter, with all you other dudes around. Gross.”
    I was horrified. This was not the first time since coming to America I had to sit through a conversation about jerking off. Max even talked about jerking off in front of our parents! They never knew what he meant, though, because he’d make up his own words for it, like
punching the clown
. Sometimes he’d talk about
helping his best friend get an oil change
, or
going out for a shake with my best friend
. But one night, he explained it to me in excruciatingly clinical detail. Max told me that all “normal” American boys constantly
cooked soup
, and that I’d have to stop acting like such an uptight immigrant kid and loosen up. And a number of the boys in my classes at William E. Shuck High School talked about jerking off as casually as you’d talk about going to the movies, or what you ate for lunch.
    Robin Sexton swallowed hard and then only stared—at Cobie, then Max, then me.
    Then he replaced his toilet paper earplugs and put his face back down in his food.
    Dinner ended with the agonizing song-singing that was a scheduled nightly event at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Larry came back from wherever he’d been hiding, and the six counselors, with two guitars, a tambourine, autoharp, and a cowbell, commanded all the planets to join in singing three songs I had never heard before. The first two songs were called
“Kum Ba Yah” and “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”
    And I was not the only boy unfamiliar with these songs, since they played no part whatsoever in the culture of video gaming and social networking. So the counselors passed out photocopied lyrics sheets and made us sing, sing, sing, until we got the songs stuck in our heads for good.
    Also, the counselors encouraged us all to sing the word
balls
instead of
ears
during our multitudinous renditions of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” Everyone thought this was very daring and funny. I thought it was as demented as having a conversation about
punching the clown
over dinner.
    But the worst thing was the third song. Nobody except the counselors and Max knew the third song, because it did not exist anywhere outside the solar system of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Max knew it because he’d been required to sing this same song during his summer at fat camp. The song was called “Boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour,” and it went like this:
    Merrie-Seymour Boys!
    We’re Merrie-Seymour Boys!
    We’re learning healthy habits,
    Smart as foxes, quick as rabbits!
    When people see us they turn and stare,
    Merrie-Seymour Boys are